Transcript Overview of Human Dimensions Research

Human Dimensions (HARC)
Human Dimensions
• A clear design for investigation of the
interactions and feedbacks among the
human and the biophysical systems
• Interdisciplinary - linking social and
biophysical sciences
• Situated in the context of global/arctic
environmental change
Human Dimensions Research is
Not
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Community participation
Integration of TEK/LEK
Outreach
Education
• All involves humans
• All can be part of HD research
but these are not research activities…..
Highest Priority Key Unknowns
• Ways that human activity in the Arctic affects the Arctic
system.
– global activity is a factor in climate change,
but what effects are humans in the Arctic
having on the system in which they are part.
• Ways that humans in the Arctic are responding to system
change.
– We know something about various adaptations
and changes in behavior, but not nearly enough
• Ways that Arctic change is affecting humans outside the
Arctic.
Key Questions
• How have and how will Arctic peoples and institutions
adapt to variable environmental conditions, to fluctuating
resources, and to changes in the political and economic
milieu? (Adaptation)
• How has and how does human agency modify the
present and future state of Arctic social-ecological
systems? (Feedbacks)
• In the face of multi-dimensional global changes, how will
the resilience of the Arctic system change and what
policies and practices will lead to greater resilience
within the pan-arctic and its subregions? (Resilience)
• How do changes in the arctic system relate to and
impact the broader global system? (Teleconnections)
Primary goals
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Quantitative social indicators
Time series HD data
Time series interpretations of HD data
Expansion of HD research beyond the local
scale
• Model building to develop understanding of the
behavior(s) of the human component of the
system and to explore the implications of
behavioral change on a system-wide scale
HARC Research Fills GAPS
• HARC research to date has helped show
that human activity in the Arctic may
indeed be a factor that needs to be
considered.
• HARC research has also showed ways
that humans have responded to climate
change in the north.
NSF Supported Research
Paleo
• The Kuril Biocomplexity Project: Human Vulnerability and
Resilience to Subarctic Change
(http://depts.washington.edu/ikip/index.html
Ben Fitzhugh [email protected], U of Washington
• Subsistence Choices, Mercury Bioaccumulation, and
Ecosystem Change: A Long-term View from the Gulf of Alaska
Maribeth S. Murray, [email protected] U of Alaska Fairbanks
• Complex Ecosystem Interactions Over Multiple Spatial and
Temporal Scales: The Biocomplexity of Sanak Island
Herbert D.G. Maschner [email protected] Idaho State
NSF Supported Research
Paleo
• Zooarchaeology & Human Ecodynamics in Northern Iceland
and Faroe Islands (ARC/OPP)
Thomas McGovern [email protected] CUNY Hunter College
• "Warm Times, Cold Times:-Quantitative Reconstructions of
Near-Shore Environments Over the Last 2000 Years in
Vestfirdir, NW Iceland: Natural Changes and Human Responses
(ARC/OPP)
John Andrews [email protected] U of Colorado
• Shetland Islands Climate and Settlement Project: Historical
Ecology and Archaeology of Fragile Coastal Environments
(ARC/OPP – SGER)
Gerald Bigelow [email protected] U of Maine
NSF Supported Research
Human/Rangifer/Terrestrial Systems
• Heterogeneity and Resilience of Human-Rangifer Systems: A
Circumpolar Social-Ecological Synthesis (ARC/OPP)
http://www.rap.uaf.edu/kofinas/HRS/index.htm
Gary Kofinas, [email protected] University of Alaska Fairbanks
• Reindeer Herding in Transition: Feedbacks Between Climate,
Caribou, and Local Communities in Northwest Alaska
Knut Kielland [email protected], U Alaska Fairbanks
• Fire-Mediated Changes in the Arctic System: Interactions of
Changing Climate and Human Activities
F. Stuart Chapin [email protected] U Alaska Fairbanks
NSF Supported Research
Human/Coastal/Marine/Sea Ice
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Collaborative Research: Environmental Variability, Bowhead Whale
Distributions, and Inupiat Subsistence Whaling - Linkages and
Resilience of an Alaskan Coastal System
Robert Campbell [email protected], University of Rhode Island
Wieslaw Maslowski [email protected], Naval Post Graduate School
Carin Ashjian [email protected], Woods Hole
Stephen Okkonen [email protected], University of Alaska Fairbanks
• BE/CNH: An Integrated Investigation of Coupled Human and
Sea-Ice Systems: A Comparison of Changing Environments
and Their Uses in the North American Arctic
 Roger Barry [email protected]
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An Integrated Assessment of the Impacts of Climate Variability on the
Alaskan North Slope Coastal Region
James Maslanik [email protected]
Current Research
Human/Freshwater/Watershed
Systems
• Collaborative Research: Humans and Hydrology at High
Latitudes (ARC/OPP)
 Daniel White [email protected] U Alaska Fairbanks
 Richard Lammers [email protected], U New Hampshire
• Dangerous Ice, Part 2 (ARC/OPP)
William Schneider [email protected] U Alaska Fairbanks
• COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: Applications of Interactive
Integrated Assessment and Modeling to Design Sustainable
Development Strategies for Arctic Watersheds (Phase 2)
(ARC/OPP)
 Robert Wheelersburg [email protected]
 Alexey Voinov [email protected]
Current Research
Risk/Uncertainty/Decision Making
• Search, Learning and Dynamic Choice under
Uncertainty: An Empirical Analysis of Alaskan
Halibut Fishermen (SBS/SBE)
Quinn Weninger [email protected]
• DRU Research Community Development Proposal:
Workshop on Climate, Uncertainty, and Multilateral
Management of Harvested Highly-Migratory Marine
Fish Stocks (OCE/GEO)
Kathleen Miller [email protected]
• Migration in the Arctic: Subsistence, Jobs, and WellBeing in Urban and Rural Communities
Terry Huskey [email protected] U Alaska Anchorage
CR - Methods and Education
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Traditional Knowledge Transect: Engaging Communities in
Discussions of Environmental Change through a Dog Sled Expedition
Across Northeastern Alaska (ARC/OPP)
Henry Huntington [email protected], Eagle River Alaska
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Indigenous Knowledge Systems Research Colloquium (ARC/OPP)
Raymond Barnhardt [email protected] U of Alaska Fairbanks
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Doctoral Dissertation Research: Expanding Collaboration on Climate
Change Issues: Scientific and Inupiat Eskimo Communities in
Northern Alaska
Ralph Keeling [email protected](Principal Investigator)
Tegan Blaine (Co-PI)
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Circle of Knowledge on Climate, Weather and Environmental Change:
A Community-based Research Project with the Koyukon Athabascan
Communities along the Koyukuk River in Alaska
Shannon McNeeley [email protected], U of Colorado
CR – Methods and Education
• Collaborative Research: Investigating Ecological Change in the
Nearshore Kotzebue Sound Ecosystem: Simultaneous
Application of Traditional and Scientific Ecological Knowledge
 Stephen Jewett [email protected] U of Alaska Fairbanks
 Jeffrey Johnson [email protected], E Carolina U
 William Ambrose [email protected], Bates College
• Social-Ecological Resilience, Sustainability, and the Future of
Remote Resource Dependent Communities
Lilian Alessa [email protected], U Alaska Anchorage
• Sustainability and Stewardship in Alaska
S. Craig Gerlach, [email protected], U Alaska Fairbanks
Future Directions
Emerging Trends
• Derived from perusal of conference papers
and posters presented in various
disciplinary, interdisciplinary, regional and
global contexts
Trends in Paleo HD Research
• Increasing inter-disciplinarity because of a focus
on complex system analysis
• Incorporation of LEK
• Focus on downscale feedbacks and interactions
as opposed to drivers of change
• Merging with other paleo research programs for
development of new proxies
• Development of HD research programs in the
Arctic and high Arctic
Policy Area
• Role of institutions in causing and
mitigating arctic/global environmental
problems
• Role of arctic residents in national and
international arctic/global change policy
development
• Role of the Arctic Council in managing and
planning for arctic/global change (using
the Antarctic Treaty System as a model)
Trends in HD Research
Health
• Fatality rates and links to arctic/global change
• Changes in disease types, invasive infectious
diseases, parasites etc.
• Links among arctic change, industrial
development contaminant pathways, exposure
rates, and human security
• Food security in the context of Arctic change
(farming, agriculture, subsistence, industrial)
Development and Arctic Change
• Synergies among climate change, land
use change, and social change
• Rural and urban linkages
• Development at the marine/terrestrial
interface
Convergence of Methods
• Multivariate time plots to integrate
qualitative data across disciplines and
data derived from LK/TK
• Socio-ecological hotspot mapping
• Integrated modeling
• Standardization
• Linking to global human dimensions
research agenda and research methods
What else…
- Engaging with geographers and political
scientists – driving forces in the global HD
research community
- General trends in HD research vary at the
international level (i.e. policy heavy, LEK
focus, more or less integrated, etc.)
- Much innovative inter-disciplinary research
is unfunded or funded at low levels
Funding Priorities
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How human activities in the Arctic affect the
system.
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Possibly a substantial component of change,
especially locally & regionally.
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Local and regional-scale field work
analysis and modeling and synthesis
How Arctic climate change affects people.
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needs to includes both people in the Arctic and
beyond.
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some field studies (Arctic)
more analysis/modeling as well as synthesis (global).